This Day
by bingblot
Summary: It's the January 9th anniversary of Beckett's mom's murder. And she was letting him in to this most sacred part of her life. He was never going to get over the surprises of this day. One-shot, set in S5.


Disclaimer: All things "Castle" belong to Andrew Marlowe & Co.

Author's Note: Written because the scene, the line of Beckett saying, "I love him, Mom," leaped into my head and, well, that turned into this. For this fic, I'm pretending that "Significant Others" occurred some time after its air date so it hasn't occurred yet.

**This Day**

A knock on the door startled Castle out of the computer game he was playing.

He opened the door and then momentarily froze. "Beckett," he said in surprise. He hadn't been expecting to see her. She had told him she had asked for the day off from work and he had quietly nodded and said he would use the day to catch up on his writing. It was January 9th, one day which she usually reserved for herself. And much as he ached to help her, he wouldn't push, he told himself. Not about this, not on this day, of all days in the year. About other things, on other days, he might—oh, who was he kidding, he would push, try to get her to let him in. But not today.

She gave him a rather wan smile and then she stepped forward, straight into his arms.

"Kate?" He kept his voice gentle, kept his arms securely around her.

She drew back just enough to look up at him. "I was wondering… if you're not busy…" she let out a breath, "would you like to meet my mom?"

He froze, forgot how to breathe, forgot how to move as he stared at her. She was letting him in to this most sacred part of her life. She was letting him in without his asking.

He had been silent too long, he realized, when her hopeful, if rather tentative, smile wavered to be replaced with doubt, uncertainty. "If you're busy—I know you wanted to get some writing done."

"No!" he burst out too forcefully and then had to forcibly moderate his tone. "No, I'm not busy. I'm never too busy for you, Kate, and I would be honored to meet your mom." He used the somewhat formal phrasing deliberately and she smiled.

"Thanks, Castle."

He relaxed a little, now that she looked and sounded more like her usual self. "Just give me a minute and then we can leave."

She nodded and he closed the door of the loft behind her before rushing back into his study, exiting the game, and closing his laptop, and then hurriedly dumping out his half-full mug of coffee. He was aware that there was no reason for him to be in such a rush but he couldn't help it.

She was letting him in. She was letting him in without his asking and he could sense that she was still a little uncertain of her decision to do so and he didn't want to give her time to second-guess herself or change her mind entirely.

So he was ready, had pulled his coat and scarf out of the closet and shrugged into it, in what was probably record time. "I'm ready."

She gave him a somewhat amused look but didn't otherwise comment on his flurry to get ready.

He was a little unsure of himself and so he didn't touch her as they left, not even to rest his hand on her back, but then she slipped her gloved hand into his as they stepped outside onto the street and his heart lifted.

In spite of knowing what a hard day this was for her, in spite of all his sympathy for her, he was happy. Happy and guilty for feeling happy on a day that was so sad for her but happy nonetheless. He was almost always happy with her and he really couldn't imagine not feeling happy when they were holding hands. And she was willingly inviting him into this most sacred part of her life, without his asking.

Her car was parked down the block and they were almost to it when he suddenly remembered something and stopped short. "Wait. Flowers. I should get flowers. I can't meet your mom empty-handed."

Her expression softened as she willingly obeyed his tugging and turned her steps to head towards where he knew the nearest market that sold flowers was.

"What kind of flowers does your mom like?" He deliberately used the present tense, somehow sensing that it would be easier for her for now to try to pretend that this was a normal introduction, that she was just bringing a man she liked to meet her mother.

"Mom's favorite flowers are daffodils and she likes lilies too."

He glanced at the selection of flowers. No daffodils—it was way too early in the year for that—and no lilies either.

"That one." She pointed one out, a fresh colorful spray of flowers he couldn't identify, a combination of yellow and orange and red. She looked at him. "Mom likes colorful bouquets."

He bought the flowers and held them as she drove to the cemetery. She was quiet—he guessed she was preparing for this—and he didn't break the silence.

Other times, he would. He always talked more than she did and talking nonsense was one of his ways of coping with any sort of nervousness as it was and he knew that she didn't mind his nonsense. Oh she rolled her eyes and made sarcastic rejoinders but she couldn't completely hide the twitching of her lips or the slight twitch of the muscle in her cheek that let him know she was fighting a smile.

Other times, but not today. Today was different. Today was sacred. Today was about her and for maybe the first time in his life, he didn't feel the need to fill up a silence with words.

And not for the first time, he thought that this was maybe part of what made this relationship with Kate different, more than any relationship he'd ever been in before. He'd changed for her; he knew he had. He'd—well, he'd grown up for her. She'd told him that he'd pried into her mother's case for his own sake and not for hers and she'd been right—now that he thought about it, he couldn't believe she'd forgiven him, let him back in to the precinct after that but it was just one of the things that amazed him about her, her capacity to forgive—he'd pried into her mother's case for his own curiosity and done it without thinking. And even though he knew that he'd never, in his wildest dreams, imagined the levels and layers of the conspiracy that had surrounded Johanna Beckett's murder, he also knew himself well enough to know that, at the time, even if he had guessed, it might not have stopped him. Considering consequences was never his strong suit—still wasn't—but for the most part, he'd gotten away with his impulsiveness his entire life on, as his mother had phrased it, "wit, charm, and no small amount of talent." And he'd mostly coasted through his life on his wit, charm, and talent and he'd been fine, mostly fine, and for so long, the only thing in his life that was real, solid, and based on more than wit, charm, and talent was Alexis. And then he met _her_. And for her, because of her—wit, charm, and talent weren't enough and he'd had to find more in himself. He had grown just from knowing her, from watching her, had found more strength, more compassion, more concern for justice, than he even knew he was capable of, let alone knew it was what he wanted or needed.

Kate Beckett had changed him—and when he thought that he'd never loved anyone the way he loved her, he couldn't help but think also that the reason for that was because before her, until her, he hadn't really been capable of the depths of the love he felt for her now.

They were in the cemetery now and she parked her car and then let her hands fall into her lap as she lowered her head for a moment.

"Kate," he began carefully, "I can wait here for you, give you and your mom some time."

She looked up at him and the look in her eyes told him the answer—and made his heart flip—even before she spoke. "No, Castle, I want you to come with me."

"Okay. Whatever you want, Kate," he agreed.

She flashed him what he thought of as her playful-Kate smile—and yes, he'd catalogued all her smiles and that wasn't weird at all, was it?—and then murmured, "Oh, that'll come later, Rick."

He gaped at her, just stared at her for a few seconds, his body reacting instinctively to the look in her eyes, the tone of her voice, even as his brain flatly refused to comprehend what had just happened. No. _No._ Kate Beckett had _not_ just said that, had not just flirted with him—oh, hell, who was he kidding, she'd seduced him in the blink of an eye—on this day, at this moment, in this place. It wasn't possible. He'd imagined it. God knew he had a vivid imagination and after all these years, he had the equivalent of an advanced degree in imagining Seductive Kate, Happy-With-Him Kate.

But then she smiled at him again—her soft-Kate smile—and his brain caught up to reality. She was amazing—and he wondered if there would ever come a day when she stopped surprising him. He doubted it.

She opened the car door and slid out. "Come on, Castle."

He followed her—of course he followed her—and saw that she looked more serious now. Still content, deep down, he could read her expression well enough to see that, but somber with all that. And he understood. He wondered if she had any idea what it meant to him that she had asked him to come with her today—stupid question, he realized even before the thought finished crossing his mind. Of course she knew. She knew better than anyone what this meant.

Kate slipped her hand into his free one and they walked, hand in hand, past the rows of tombstones. And for maybe the first time in his life when in a cemetery, he didn't care a whit about the stories on the stones they were passing; he only peripherally registered their existence while all the rest of him was focused on her.

A faint change of pace, the subtlest flicker of expression across her face, warned him that they were nearing her mom's tombstone and his gaze flitted ahead, caught the fleeting glimpse of the letters 'C-K-E-T-T' and his gaze stopped, froze on that stone. The one they eventually stopped in front of.

_Johanna Beckett. _

His mind registered the Latin motto—truth conquers all—and the dates, lingered briefly on the fatal January 9th.

Castle suddenly felt a wave of loss go through him as he focused on the name. _Johanna Beckett. _He pictured some of the pictures of Johanna Beckett during her life that he'd seen. And he wondered just how hard it must be for Kate to see her mother, the real, live person Kate had known and loved so much, reduced to this, just a name on a stone.

He had always been sensible of that aspect of tombstones; it was what made him always try to imagine stories for the real, living people memorialized on the stones, bring them back to (imaginary) life for a little while as more than just letters spelling out a name.

But what caught him now was a more personal sense of loss. He would never know the real Johanna Beckett. He would never know the woman who had been such a huge influence on Kate, who had shaped Kate and made her who she was. And he suddenly realized that he hated that thought—not, for the first time, only because of how much her loss had hurt Kate but for his own sake. From all he knew of her, Johanna Beckett must have been an incredible woman in her own right. Smart and determined and passionate about justice and the rule of law. And he would have liked to have met her. Not only because he was in love with her daughter but because she would have been someone worth knowing.

Slowly, he bent to lay the flowers in front of the tombstone and then straightened up.

Kate's grip on his hand tightened slightly and beside him, he heard her take in a deep breath.

"Hi, Mom. It's me," she began, her voice steady, if somewhat quieter than her usual speaking voice. "And this is Rick Castle, the author whose books you liked so much."

Wait. What?

He swung his gaze up to stare at her. Her mother had liked his books?

"I wanted you to meet him because I love him, Mom."

Good God, there was just no getting over the surprises of this day. His heart stopped and then was suddenly clattering in his chest as if it wanted to escape from his body and for a moment, he could almost swear the entire world stopped spinning and every other living creature on it held its breath as her words repeated through his mind.

_I love him. I love him. I love him… _

She had never said the words to him, not directly. She'd said she wanted him, that he was all she wanted, that she never wanted to lose him, that she was his, always. So many things she'd said, each one of them engraved on his memory, so infinitely precious to him. And more than her words, he'd heard what had to be love in her voice, felt it in her touch. It was in the way she called him by his first name sometimes, "Rick," the one syllable sometimes breathed against his ear when he was inside her, sometimes whispered when they were both on the verge of sleep. It was in the way she ran her fingers through his hair, the way she smiled at him sometimes, the expression on her face when she brought him coffee. And it had been enough, really. He trusted her and he knew she was in this, with him, for real. There was no way she could behave with him the way she did, all the warmth in her voice, the passion and the tenderness in her touch, if she didn't love him. He thought of Christmas Eve, the way she had been willing to change her tradition, start a new one, for him, remembered the look in her eyes that night. So he'd hoped, believed, trusted that she loved him.

But she hadn't actually said the words. And irrational as it might be, he found he wanted the words from her, needed to hear her say it to know, really _know_, that _she_ knew, that she was committed to this, to _them_, with all the strength of her heart.

He had said the words to her in the last few months—he couldn't hold them back—but he'd been careful not to pressure her, not to seem as if he required a response. Because he didn't, he really didn't. It wasn't as if he told her he loved her only to hear her say the same thing to him; he would love her anyway. He loved Kate Beckett; it was a fact of life, one of those truths that simply _was_. Ranked right up there with things like the law of gravity and the sun rising in the east.

Kate Beckett loved him. And she had just told her _mom_ that.

And that was the part that suddenly struck him as being almost funny. Might have been funny if everything about this moment wasn't too big, too important, to ever really be funny. Because it meant _more_ to hear her tell her _mom_ that she loved him than it would have been to hear her simply say, 'I love you' for the first time. Not that he would ever have been able to hear those words from her and have them not mean everything to him but this, hearing her tell her mom that, meant _more_ than everything.

Because he knew her and he knew what her mom meant to her, knew that Kate held her mom to be sacred.

_I love him, Mom. _

But she wasn't done.

"He makes me happy. He makes me so happy and I just wanted you to know that because—" for the first time, her voice faltered, shook a little, as she finished, "I know it's what you always wanted for me."

No, he was never ever getting over the surprises of this day, he thought, inconsequentially, as he lost his breath for the second time in as many minutes. Was never ever going to forget the least detail about this day, the bite of the wind, the slate gray of the clouds, the peek of blue in one corner of the sky, the hardness of the winter ground, the almost jarringly bright splash of colors that was the bouquet of flowers he'd brought.

He'd thought that Alexis's graduation day last May, that amazing, terrible, wonderful, miraculous stormy day, would be The Day, forever, the day that would divide the rest of his life into a Before and After. And of course, it had been, it still was. But he also knew that today, this January 9th, had just become another one of those days, another cataclysm in his life, separating it into a Before and an After. And how fitting that it would be January 9th, that January 9th would take on that sort of meaning in his life just as it already had in hers. He loved the idea of that, of their sharing a day, a date that separated their lives into a Before and After.

And although it was by no means the first time he'd thought it, he found himself thinking that he needed to start planning for the other cataclysm of their lives, the other shared date that would turn both their lives into a Before and After—their wedding day. The official beginning of their Always.

He wouldn't ask her yet; he knew she wasn't ready for that yet. But he would ask—he was suddenly terrified at the very thought of it—but he would ask so she would know that _that_ was what this was about, what this—between them—had always, _always_ been about. (He supposed it was typical of him, to have already known that she would be his Always before they had so much as kissed but there it was. Because his heart had known, had realized for years now, that that was what this was, that she was his Always. That whatever happened, he would never ever really love anyone else, that if—oh God, _if_—he didn't marry her, he would never marry anyone else. It should have been crazy—he was Richard Castle, with two failed marriages and a string of casual flings behind him—but somehow, it was true. He'd found her and he was done. "One and done" as she'd once said—and how ridiculous to think that they were the same in that. But somehow, in some way, they were. He knew that now, knew that Meredith and Gina—and even Kyra, as much as he had cared about her—hadn't been real. This, what he felt for Kate, was the real thing and now he was done.)

He watched her, even though she wasn't looking at him, was still looking down at her mother's tombstone. Her hand went up in her characteristic gesture to finger her mother's ring and he wondered fleetingly what else she was telling her mom in the silence of her thoughts.

_I love him, Mom. He makes me happy. _

After a few minutes, she lifted her head, meeting his eyes, through the tears swimming in her own. He hesitated, wanted to hold her, but wasn't quite sure what she wanted, needed, but then she turned and stepped into his arms, nestling her head against his shoulder.

His gaze lowered again to the tombstone and he found himself mentally addressing Johanna Beckett. _I love Kate, Mrs. Beckett. I will always love her and I swear to you I will do everything in my power to keep her safe and happy. _

She let out a shuddering breath before stepping away from him.

He met her eyes. "I wish I could have known your mom," he said quietly.

She gave him what he termed a vulnerable-Kate smile. "I wish she could have known you too. She would have liked you."

He managed a small smile. "Well, if she already liked my books, that's a good first step to liking me too."

Her smile deepened, reached her eyes. "She did like your books, Castle."

"You've never told me that before."

A spark of mischief entered her eyes. "I didn't want to make your ego any bigger than it already is."

He allowed himself the barest hint of a smug smile. "Too late for that."

She rolled her eyes a little, though he saw the twitch of her lips that gave her away, as she turned away, back towards where her car was.

They were almost back at her car before she paused and turned to him. "Castle."

"Hmm?"

She met his eyes, suddenly looking so serious his heart took a dive. "I love you."

Oh God oh God… He was never ever ever going to forget this day.

"I love you too." It was all he could say and it suddenly struck him as being absurd that an emotion as…big… as what he felt for Kate should be summed up in such small words. It seemed as if there should be bigger, more impressive words to adequately capture the magnitude of what he felt but there really weren't.

She gifted him with the loving-Kate smile, the one that showed her heart in her eyes, the one he only ever saw her use when she was talking about her mom or her dad or—miraculously—now, sometimes, sometimes when she looked at him.

Her smile faded. "There's… there's somewhere else I want to go, if you'll come with me."

"Anywhere," he promised recklessly but with complete truth too. He would go with her anywhere; he would walk into hell if she asked him.

The corners of her mouth twitched as if she tried to smile but couldn't manage it. "This… this one's harder," she said. Warning him?

"I'll go with you anywhere," he said again.

She nodded and this time, she succeeded in giving him a very faint smile, one that existed mostly in her eyes rather than on her lips.

He didn't ask where they were going. There was a look on her face, too much tension in her hands where they gripped the steering wheel of her car, and so he didn't ask. He didn't speak at all but, after a few minutes, he lifted a hand and slid it beneath her hair, under the collar of her coat, to cup the back of her neck. She didn't say anything and kept her eyes on the road but he felt the way she relaxed into his touch, felt the easing of some of her tension. And he was happy, so so happy just to know that he could do this for her, help her like this. More, that she would _let_ him help her like this because he knew her and Kate Beckett was the most self-reliant person he'd ever met. Her life had made her that way, he knew, and he understood it, was in awe of it, but he loved her and he wanted to be there for her.

They ended up back in Manhattan, in the Upper West Side. Her movements were decisive, Beckett-like, as she parked, got out of the car, and locked it again.

Kate slipped her hand into his the moment she finished—and his heart flipped a little. Again. Still. Damn, he really was so far beyond smitten with Kate Beckett, it was almost pathetic. He didn't know when he'd turned into this man who felt his heart flip just from holding a woman's hand but there it was. He'd never been that man before. He could flirt and charm and do the romantic gestures with the best of them but the outward gestures had never gone much deeper than that, not for him. The closest, only comparison he had to this sort of sentimentality was what he felt for Alexis because, of course, he had always been completely, utterly wrapped up in his daughter since the first moment he'd seen her in the hospital and yes, his heart had always melted at every little thing Alexis did. But that had been father love. And for years, he'd thought that maybe he was just not built for real, crazy romantic love, but only for father love. With every other woman, even at the height of his feelings for her, there had always been a little detached part of himself, maybe it was the writer in him, that stood back, acted almost as a narrator or a theatre director (clearly, he hadn't grown up surrounded by stage actors for nothing), dictating his role, what he should be feeling and acting. He'd wanted to feel that sort of all-consuming love to the point that he'd almost talked himself into thinking he loved Meredith and Gina that way and he had cared for them, about them, and he'd done the big-gesture proposals and the other big romantic gestures and told himself he meant them because it was what he was supposed to feel, supposed to do. With Kate, from the very beginning, that inner narrator had been gone and it had only been him and all he could do was react and feel and care and do and fall in love with her, fall so deeply and completely he knew he'd never get over her. And now finally, he was here with her and she _loved him_. And he was just floored by it all over again because he knew, just knew, that Kate Beckett's love would be the strongest, deepest, truest thing in the world. It was just the type of person she was.

She stopped walking so abruptly that it took him a second to realize she was no longer beside him, that she had frozen in place on the sidewalk, that her hand was suddenly gripping his like a vise.

"Kate?"

She didn't look at him, was looking past him, her eyes wide and focused on—he glanced back, followed her gaze—to a restaurant at the end of the block.

He frowned a little but turned back to her immediately, closing the small distance between them until he was standing right in front of her, lifting his free hand to touch her cheek lightly. "Kate?"

Her eyes found his, clung to his. "Castle," she finally breathed. He didn't think he'd ever heard her say his name in that tone before. And he suddenly knew what he was hearing: need. Not physical need—he'd heard that and he'd thrilled to it and it was hotter than he'd imagined it would be—she was really proving in so many ways that his vivid imagination had its limits, he suddenly found himself thinking inconsequentially, absurdly. But this was emotional need.

She was letting him in, letting him see and hear that she needed him—and she was doing it without his asking.

He was never ever getting over the surprises of this day, he thought for what felt like the hundredth time that day.

He didn't know if it was because of what day it was, the one day where Kate's emotions were always raw, so close to the surface—come to think of it, that was probably it—but he didn't care about the whys and wherefores. All that mattered was that she was letting him in, letting him _see_.

"I'm here, Kate. I'm right here," he told her and left out the unspoken word, _always_, because by now, she had to know that already.

After a long moment, she nodded, slowly, and then she smiled her soft-Kate smile, a paler shadowy version of it, but it was the soft-Kate smile. And he knew she was, if not fine, at least closer to it. And her strength, her courage, at that moment amazed him.

God, he loved her.

"I—I haven't been back here in more than ten years," she finally admitted quietly.

He glanced back at the restaurant and then back at her and suddenly remembered what she'd told him years ago about the night she'd found out about her mother. Oh. His heart suddenly hurt.

"This is where we were supposed to meet that night," she confirmed his guess as if she'd followed his thoughts, which she probably had. "My dad and I…" she sucked in her breath, her voice shaking ever so slightly, "waited but then we ate our dinners, assuming she'd been held up at work or—or something, before we went home."

He flinched a little at the normality of it, the suddenness of the blow. It was something he never got over with murders, with so many deaths, how it came so suddenly, the bolt from the blue that changed a person's life forever.

"This used to be one of our favorite restaurants, the place we'd come when we were going out to eat, not for a special occasion, but just because. One of us, my mom or my dad or even me a few times, would suggest it and we'd come here, usually on the spur of the moment."

He nodded. Of course. People had restaurants like that, places they would never go to for the special occasions, the ones that were planned in advance, but the comfort places, the familiar ones that were for everyday treats. And his heart hurt all over again at the realization that her mother's death had stolen this place from her too, poisoned the comfort of it.

"I—I came back here only once after… afterwards. More than a year later, I—I thought I might be able to handle it, that it would make me feel closer to her and to how my Dad used to be, so I came here and I ordered the apple pie that was my mom's favorite and tea like my mom always used to."

"Tea?" he interrupted in spite of himself, even though the moment the word escaped he could almost have kicked himself. This wasn't the time to be interrupting with his irrelevant questions.

She choked on a small laugh. "Yeah, tea. Mom was a tea drinker. Dad's the coffee drinker. They used to give each other a hard time about it, Mom taking a sip of Dad's coffee and then pulling a face, and Dad doing the same thing with Mom's tea."

He smiled a little, treasuring this little new story, storing it with all the other random—and not-so-random things he knew about Kate and her family, things he loved knowing.

She sobered. "I couldn't do it. I—I started to cry the minute the pie and the tea arrived and then I ran." She tried for a small smile but didn't make it. "I don't know to this day how I remembered to pay but I did or I would have gotten stopped for stealing and really wrecked the day."

Her courage broke his heart.

His fingers were still touching her cheek and he moved his hand just enough to fully cup her cheek with his hand, his fingers brushing away some strands of her hair. "Kate… you don't have to do this," he told her gently. "You don't have anything to prove to anyone that you need to come back here, put yourself through this."

She shook her head a little. "No, Rick, that's not it," she said and the sound of his first name on her lips stopped him cold and told him more than anything else really could how seriously she'd thought about it, how much she meant it. "I want to reclaim this place I used to love. Not to prove myself but just because I hate that it was taken away from me. I used to love this place so much and I want this small piece of my past life back. Now, when I'm… really happy… again, I want to take back this place I loved. Does that make sense?"

"It makes sense," he said simply, even as he thought his heart might burst. He didn't think he would ever get enough of hearing Kate say that she was happy—with him, because of him. _He makes me happy. _

Her expression eased. "I thought… I want to have you with me when I do this."

He nodded and then gave her a small smile. "Kate, would you like to have apple pie and tea with me?" Asking the question like that, making it an invitation of sorts, was an impulse and one he wasn't sure of the moment he asked it but then she smiled at him, a full-on happy-Kate smile, and she was dazzling. She was always dazzling when she was so openly happy and right now, in spite of everything, she was happy.

"Maybe not tea, but we can have coffee instead," she offered. "It's coming back to the place that matters, after all. And you're here and coffee is our thing."

"Will you buy me coffee then, Beckett?" he grinned at her and couldn't help the note of childish glee that slipped into his tone. He loved it when she got him coffee, loved it so much he could almost laugh at himself for it. Who knew that a simple cup of coffee could come to mean so much?

"Yes, Castle, I will."

Her smile dimmed as they neared the restaurant and her hand tightened around his when they walked in but she didn't otherwise falter.

He saw her eyes glance around, drinking it all in, and then she murmured, almost more to herself than to him, "It looks different than I remember it."

"Is that good or bad?" he ventured as they slid into a booth.

"It's good, I think. It makes it… easier."

By necessity, she had released his hand as she sat across from him but then, after only a brief moment, she reached across the table and reclaimed his hand.

They were holding hands across a table. Damn, they really were a couple now, weren't they? Doing all the couple-y things.

He glanced at their joined hands and smiled.

They ordered coffees and she ordered a slice of apple pie. At just after 11 in the morning, he thought, torn between amusement and tenderness. Kate wasn't much of a dessert person, indulging herself only occasionally, but apparently today, sentiment outweighed her usual habits.

He waited until the server had left before he waggled his brows at her a little. "So, your mom liked my books?"

She huffed out a breath and rolled her eyes. "I knew I was going to regret telling you that."

"Cat's out of the bag now, Beckett, so spill. Was she as much of a fan as you are?"

"She liked your books," she temporized neutrally.

"What about your dad? What does he think of my books?" he asked suddenly, surprised that it had never occurred to him to ask this before but then again, it had never occurred to him that Johanna Beckett might have liked his books either.

"Dad never understood why my mom liked your books. He used to tease her for her taste in liking 'low-brow genre fiction,' as he jokingly called it."

Castle pulled a face of exaggerated dismay. "Beckett, I think I have to revise my opinion of your dad."

She went on with a soft, reminiscent look in her eyes. "Mom would always make a face at my dad when he teased her over your books and accuse him of being a literary snob. And Dad would catch Mom around the waist and kiss her and tell her it was okay, that he loved her in spite of her low-brow tastes." Her expression softened in that way he only ever saw when she spoke about her parents before she added with a small, wry twist of her lips, "Of course, at the time I thought it was gross and protested loudly."

He laughed a little at this admission, mentally picturing the teenage Beckett looking disgusted at her parents' display of affection.

"My mom just laughed at me and told me, 'someday, Katie girl, you won't think it's gross that your parents still kiss each other and when that day comes, I'll be here to say, 'I told you so.'" Her lips trembled slightly as she finished, very quietly, "As always, Mom was right." She left unsaid that her mom had never gotten the chance to tell Kate 'I told you so.'

"It must come with motherhood," he said with forced lightness. "My mother thinks she's always right too and doesn't hesitate to tell me so."

"I'm sure Martha is right more often than not, Castle."

"Please, we're talking about the woman who let her former husband steal all her life savings so she had to move back in with me and never leave, the permanent non-paying house-guest," he mock-grumbled.

She grinned at him. "You don't fool me, Castle. I know you adore your mother."

He gave her a look of exaggerated horror. "I hope you never plan to tell her that; then I'll really be stuck with her forever!"

She laughed and he went on, with a teasing lift of his eyebrows, "Anyway, enough about my mother. I want to hear more about how big a fan of my books _your_ mother was."

"Well, this one time—" she broke off and then muttered, "I can_not_ believe I am thinking of telling you this story."

"Oh, now you have to tell me." He threw an added wheedle into his tone and into his eyes. "Please, Beckett?"

She rolled her eyes a little again but she gave in and the corner of her mouth twitched irrepressibly. "This one time, a couple years before—well, before—my mom was planning to go to one of your book signings."

He rapidly thought back—a couple years before Johanna Beckett had died, so 15 years ago or so. "For _A Season for Slaughter?_" he guessed, as he grinned to himself. Wow, Johanna Beckett really must have liked his books, to have wanted to wait in line and get a copy signed.

"Right. Anyway, she was planning to go, even meaning to leave work early to make it, but then the day before, something came up and so she knew she wouldn't be able to leave work early after all. She was really disappointed but that was the life of a lawyer and she knew that. My dad, though, didn't want her to be disappointed so he arranged to leave his work a little early and went to your book signing and got the book signed for her."

"Your dad was at one of my book signings? I don't remember ever seeing him." Not that he would, he supposed. He signed a lot of books and this was 15 years ago. He would have had no reason to remember.

But for all that, he was conscious of a little feeling of… disappointment or something. To know that he had met—albeit very briefly—Jim Beckett and signed a book for Johanna Beckett. It seemed as if the universe or fate or something should have sent him a sign, a signal across his neural pathways to give him a sixth sense of sorts that he was signing a book for the mother of the love of his life. Would a little sign have been too much to ask? If he'd known that he was supposed to wait for Kate then, it would have saved him from the entire debacle that was his marriage to Gina!

"Well, he wasn't some busty blonde bimbo asking you to sign her chest so there would have been no reason for you to remember him."

"Nice use of alliteration there, Beckett," he retorted. "And if this was a signing for _A Season for Slaughter_, I was still technically married to Meredith then so I wouldn't have been signing anyone's chest."

"Really, Castle? I thought signing girls' chests was always the highlight of any of your book signings."

He knew he was overreacting to her teasing but the shadow of Jerry Tyson, of what Tyson had tried to do to his relationship with Kate, still lurked, emerging from the corners of his mind to poison random moments, and he found himself saying seriously, "I don't cheat, Kate. I hope you know that by now. I'm not a saint and I don't deny I enjoy the mutual exchange of pleasure with no strings attached as much as anyone but I don't cheat. When I'm with someone, when I'm married, I keep my hands to myself."

"I know, Rick," she said quietly. "I was only teasing but I'm sorry."

He managed a twitch of his lips. "I'm sorry for overreacting." He paused and forcibly shoved any lingering thoughts of Tyson out of his head. He wasn't going to worry about it today. Today was about Kate, only about Kate. "I want to hear what happened at this signing. Did I write a personalized message for your mom?"

"I don't remember."

He narrowed his eyes at her. "Yes, you do," he contradicted her confidently.

"You sure about that?" It was her turn to narrow her eyes a little back at him.

He gave her his best smugly confident expression. "I've spent the last four years watching the best cop in the city interrogate people so yes, I'm sure about that. Besides," he added somewhat more seriously, "I know you, Kate."

Her expression softened. "Yes, you do know me, Castle," she agreed quietly. "And yes, you're right. You did write a personalized message and I remember it perfectly."

"I told you so," he said smugly. "What did I write?"

"Dad said he told you Mom was a criminal defense lawyer. So you wrote, 'To Johanna. The world needs everyday heroes like you. Keep on fighting the good fight.'" She gave him a vulnerable-Kate smile. "I saw the message when I read the book after my mom died. It made me cry."

"Oh Kate…" he sighed, feeling an odd sort of regret even as he knew it was irrational. How could he have known when he'd written that note just how tragic and true it would turn out to be? But he still hated the thought that anything he wrote might have made Kate cry.

"No, Castle. It was perfect, the most perfect thing you could have written. It meant a lot to me," she assured him, squeezing his hand a little. "I'm not sure why but it meant a lot to know that you called my mom a hero—and I know it made my mom's day. I remember how thrilled she was when she got home that night and saw the personalized message to her and realized what my dad had done. She grabbed my dad and gave him a big smacking kiss right there in the middle of the kitchen and asked my dad a ton of questions all through dinner about what you had been like."

He lifted his eyebrows. "Did your dad mention that I was ruggedly handsome as well as talented?"

"My dad only said that you were younger than he'd expected."

He pulled a face of exaggerated disappointment. "And here I was hoping for a story of how hearing my dad describe my rugged handsomeness inspired teenage Beckett with a crush on me that carried over until today."

She narrowed her eyes at him. "Keep on talking like that, Castle, and it'll make getting over my nonexistent crush on you much easier."

He clutched at his chest in a melodramatic gesture. "Ouch, Beckett, you wound me."

She laughed only to have her laugh be abruptly cut off as the waitress arrived with their order, setting a slice of apple pie in front of Kate before giving them each their coffees.

"Is there anything else you need?" the waitress gave them an impersonal smile.

"No, thank you, we're fine," he answered quickly, since he could see that Kate was still in the grip of her emotions. She was staring at the apple pie as if she'd never seen one before.

He didn't want to release her hand at that moment so he pulled Kate's coffee mug closer to him and prepared her coffee the way she liked it with his free hand, a little awkwardly, admittedly, to be opening up a sugar packet one-handed but he managed it.

"Tell me about this apple pie, Kate," he finally prompted gently as he prepared his own coffee.

She looked up at him. "It was my mom's favorite," she began simply. "Mom wasn't much of a dessert person but the apple pie here was the exception. She ordered it every single time we came here, I think. I don't remember a single time that she didn't order it. I told her once she was boring with her always getting the exact same thing but Mom only smiled and said that it's not boring to know what you want and to stick with it."

He smiled. "And some good things never get old."

Her lips curved. "Right. Would you like to share my pie, Castle?"

"Why, Detective Beckett, I thought you'd never ask."

She flashed him a happy-Kate smile, one that lit up her incredible, changeable eyes with green sparks, and handed him a fork.

And so they split the piece of apple pie and drank their coffees, mostly in silence, but every so often, their gazes met and tangled and they exchanged quick, soft smiles. They engaged in a playful battle with their forks over the last bite of the pie, a battle which she won, and scooped up the last bite into her mouth.

She gave him a smug-Kate smile. "Ha, victory is mine, Castle."

He pretended to pout. "You know, Beckett, it's not nice to gloat."

"Maybe not but it's _so_ satisfying," she shot back, emphasizing and drawing out the word, so, in a way that immediately focused his attention on her lips—and had the effect of wiping out any other thought from his brain except that he wanted to kiss her.

She'd always been able to do that, of course. He sometimes thought he'd spent most of the last four years since the moment he'd met her with his brain incapable of thinking of anything but kissing her, but it was so much worse now, now when he knew her taste, knew the softness of her lips, the heat of her mouth, the passion of her.

Her lips curved into a smirk and he realized that she knew—of course she knew—exactly what effect she'd had on him, had intended it.

He had to force his eyes and his brain away from her, focusing instead on random people walking by on the sidewalk and trying to distract himself by imagining their stories.

It was less successful than it usually was so he was aware the moment she finished putting down the money for the check and he stood up immediately, grabbing her hand.

"Castle, don't you want to wait for change?"

He glanced at the bills she'd left, made a quick guess as to how much change she was owed—no, not worth waiting for. He suspected nothing short of a couple hundred dollars in change would have stopped him at that point.

"Leave a generous tip. In memory of your mom," he added, even as he tugged her out of the restaurant and into the street.

He glanced quickly around and then immediately pulled her into the next doorway a few feet away, flattening her against it and kissed her—finally—taking her mouth with more passion than he would normally show while outside, let alone standing on a sidewalk. Kissed her with all the pent-up emotion from the entire morning, let alone the sheer want he felt as a result of her teasing earlier.

But then he drew back, ending the kiss, much much sooner than he wanted to, but he was aware that they were standing on a public sidewalk, albeit somewhat tucked into a doorway, but still in full view of the street.

She blinked her eyes open. "Remind me to tease you more often if that's how you react," she said a little breathlessly.

That got her a small laugh and a grin, something inside him dancing at her words, at her breathlessness, at the fleeting blankness of her expression as she blinked. God, he loved loved loved that he could do this, that his kiss could stop Kate Beckett from thinking.

"Sorry for the caveman act," he offered with an attempt to look contrite that failed pathetically.

She shot him an impish look. "I don't remember complaining but that's only because I'm off-duty today."

"No caveman for Detective Kate Beckett, then?"

"Detective Kate Beckett sleeps with a gun, remember?"

"But you like sleeping with me more."

She gave him the happy-Kate smile that never failed to make his heart flip. "I do," she said softly.

_I do. _

He bit back the urge to tell her to remember those words, that she would need them in the future. He wouldn't mention marriage. Not now, not yet, not so soon after the first time she told him she loved him.

"Castle," she said with sudden intensity.

He lifted his eyebrows slightly in question.

"Thank you."

"For what?"

"For…" she lifted one shoulder in a vague gesture, "everything. For coming with me today."

He heard the echo of her words to her mom again. _He makes me happy. _And he knew that was what she meant, that she was thanking him for making her smile, making her laugh, on this, the saddest day of the year.

And he wanted to tell her that she didn't need to thank him, that he'd already gotten all the reward he wanted when he heard her say she loved him, that he wanted to be there for her in all the good times and the bad times and all the times in between. And so he did and knew she would understand. "Always."

_~The End~_

_Author's Note 2: Thanks for reading! I love reviews almost as much as I love Castle. _


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